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This e-book sheds light on the concept of strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chains within a developing country context. This paper aims to investigate cognitive antecedents as well as behavioral consequences of corporate executives toward investing in strategic CSR. Moreover, it displays if and how strategic CSR contributes to creating performance benefits for the supplier.

This study is qualitative and exploratory in its nature. After drafting a five-dimensional framework from extant literature, it empirically elaborates on a case-study analysis based on primary data gathered through semi-structured interviews on ten executives (i.e. top executives, directors, owners) in large-size supplier companies within the Bangladeshi ready-made garment (RMG) supply chain.

First, it highlights altruism and performance as being cognitively and theoretically espoused in strategic CSR; yet, one appears to oust the other. Second, it demonstrates that if CSR-driven investments allow for a competitive positional betterment, as for suppliers in the Bangladeshi RMG industry, profit-driven CSR diffuses at the expense of altruism. Third, it confirms CSR’s strategic role as necessary but not sufficient for competitive advantage, delivering insights on suppliers’ future posture vis-à-vis CSR in the Bangladeshi RMG supply chains.

The e-book investigates strategic CSR’s struggle to maintain a balance between moral and profit-maximization motives at the cognitive level but being paradoxically required in supply chains. A limitation, inter alia, entails the focus on the horizontal perspective of the sample and the RMG supply chain.

The e-book provides valuable theoretical and practical insights by capitalizing on unique data retrieved from the Bangladeshi supply chain.

This article encourages novel approaches in the SSCM literature to create transformative change for workers in developing countries' apparel supply chains. It examines how suppliers' implementation of social sustainability is moderated by buyers' pressures (through dyadic ties) and by similar suppliers' pressures (through extended ties).

The article adopts a qualitative method design based on fieldwork and 21 face-to-face interviews with suppliers' senior managers. The data were collected between 2017 and 2020 in the factory premises of suppliers in Pakistan.

This article distinguishes the pressures that moderate suppliers' implementation of social sustainability positively (top-down encouragement, informal exchange and competitive convergence) and negatively (unrewarded commitment) through social ties. Hence, it shows how suppliers experience constrained proactivity as a state of tension.

The article primarily contributes to the SSCM literature by informing how similar suppliers' pressures in the business community constitute important processes of social governance and are key to create transformative change upstream in apparel supply chains. Against this backdrop, it cautions about buyers' opposite pressures and misuse of their negotiation power, which indirectly holds back and dilutes transformative change.

The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the way the cross-sector collaboration (CSC) process can foster gender-focused sustainability initiatives to improve female workers’ conditions in developing countries. The study does so by introducing and examining the influence of nonprofit boundary work during the CSC process.

The paper is based on thirty-four interviews and qualitative fieldwork. It draws on a case analysis of a regional CSC between multiple organizations operating locally in the apparel industry of Bangladesh, a developing country.

Scaffolding work in the CSC formation stage – performed by development agency implementers who construe boundaries – and sensitization work in the CSC implementation stage – performed by a non-governmental organization (NGO) implementers who blur and expand boundaries – emerge as two conceptual categories of nonprofit boundary work. This allows NGO implementers to identify and enable the agency of sustainability envoys or socially privileged individuals who capitalize on their social credentials to support female workers in the factory and in the community.

The study offers novel insights into the CSC process. It contributes to the CSC literature and the literature on boundary work, with a focus on gender-focused sustainability initiatives for female workers in developing countries.

The purpose of this research is to provide a systematic insight into corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate citizenship (CC) in supply chain development, by analyzing the current literature, contemporary concepts, data and gaps for future discipline research.

This research identifies information from existing academic journals and investigates research designs and methods, data analysis techniques, industry involvement and geographic locations. Information regarding university affiliation, publishers, authors, year of publication is also documented. A collection of online databases from 2001 to 2018 were explored, using the keywords “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in their title and abstract, to deliver an inclusive listing of journal articles in this discipline area. Based on this approach, a total of 164 articles were found, and information on a chain of variables was collected.

There has been visible growth in published articles over the last 18 years regarding supply chain sustainability, CSR and CC. Analysis of the data collected shows that only five literature reviews have been published in this area. Further, key findings include 41% of publications were narrowly focused on four sectors of industry, leaving gaps in the research. 85% centered on the survey and conceptual model, leaving an additional gap for future research. Finally, developing and developed nation status should be delineated, researched and analyzed based on further segmentation of the industry by region.

This research is limited to reviewing only academic and professional articles available from Emerald, Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, Taylor and Francis, Springer, Scopus, JSTOR and EBSCO containing the words “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in the title and abstract.

This assessment provides an enhanced appreciation of the current practices of current research and offers further directions within the CSR and CC in supply chain sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between capital structure and business process management (BPM) within ambidextrous firms. In particular, referring to the listed companies in the Mercato Telematico Azionario (MTA) and Mercato degli Investment Vehicles (MIV) markets with large- and mid-sized capitalization, divided into ambidextrous and non-ambidextrous companies, the authors examined the capital structure to fill a gap in the current literature.

This study uses a mixed-method sequential exploratory design. In particular, a qualitative study was conducted to identify some Italian-listed companies, called ambidextrous firms, which have implemented incremental (exploitative) and radical (explorative) innovations in an ambidexterity perspective of process management. A quantitative study was designed to provide insights into the different degrees of leverage of the listed companies selected by the qualitative analysis.

The research is based on an empirical analysis undertaken with 69 companies listed on Italian markets (starting from the MTA and MIV Italy 100 – large- and mid-sized capitalization). In particular, the authors highlight 11 companies that, based on the literature, can be defined as ambidextrous organizations. These firms, in each year analyzed (2014, 2015, and 2016), have more leverage than non-ambidextrous ones. Considering that firms today need to constantly revisit their portfolio of debt and equity, ambidextrous organizations could evaluate the largest debt available in order to implement new BPM tools.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first exploratory study based on capital structure and the simultaneous exploration and exploitation of knowledge (ambidexterity) that also is informed by a BPM perspective. The paper presents evidence from Italian-listed companies that are referred to as ambidextrous and have different degrees of leverage.

The first American university to have a graduate programme was Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876. Between 1880 and 1914 a number of new universities such as Stanford and Chicago were established, and older institutions such as Yale and Harvard were modernised. The University of Chicago was founded in 1892, with the help of a large founding endowment from the oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on recent developments in the open innovation literature to explore whether the openness of SMEs to the four categories of external sources of information (ESI) is complementary, substitute or independent, while assessing the determinants of SMEs’ openness to these ESI.

This research is based on data from a survey of 451 manufacturing SMEs in the province of Québec, Canada. Data have been elaborated through a multivariate probit model to empirically show that SMEs are considered to be simultaneously open to different ESI. The results of this study show significant heterogeneity in the determinants of SMEs’ openness to these ESI.

The study found that the SMEs’ openness to different ESI seems to be complementary rather than substitute; and not all variables included in the model explain the SMEs’ openness to the different ESI.

The paper provides practical implications for managers and policy makers including the SMEs’ managers’ role to recognize the consolidation of different ESI jointly instead of separately. Furthermore, managers and policy makers should attempt to provide a fair context to SMEs to manage their openness ecosystem.

This study is virtually the first to investigate both the complementarity and the determinants of SMEs’ openness to different ESI using a sophisticated econometric model.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the concept of cultural value promoted by the Italian government between 2008 and 2018. Furthermore, it aims at setting the scope for further research and debate on the issue of cultural value in Italian cultural policy by questioning market-driven understanding of value.

In order to do so, it examines the rhetoric of Italian policymakers, with a particular focus on the people who have covered the role of Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities over this 10-year span, and the policies they have implemented. The various nuances of the concept of valorizzazione are studied by analysing different pathways employed by the Italian government and the values underpinning them, with a particular focus on the abandonment of heritage sites.

What emerges from this research is the centrality of the economic value of culture; however, the economic impact of Italian cultural assets is always presented as a potential that has to be unlocked by implementing policies of valorizzazione, a term that has a double meaning of promotion and exploitation (Belfiore, 2006).

This paper presents an original approach to understanding the formation and promotion of cultural value at the level of governmental policy in the context of contemporary cultural policy in Italy. In particular, it evidences how the centrality of the economic value of culture has remained unscathed despite the rapid change of governments that has characterised Italian politics in the last 10 years.